Doubts over new building watchdog

Julia Gillard’s office, when she was deputy prime minister, decided that the federal government should be able to choose which projects the new building industry regulator could supervise, according to evidence given to a Senate inquiry.

The federal government plans to abolish the Australian Building and Construction Commission. The coercive powers of its replacement, the building inspectorate, will be able to be “turned off" for specific projects, a clause that could significantly reduce the effectiveness of the organisation.

A Senate inquiry into the bill in Melbourne on Friday heard that Master Builders Australia, the association representing employers, and the Construction, Forestry, Mining Energy Union, did not support the turn-off provisions.

“There is no precedent for a bureaucratic agency determining that a law should not apply. It breaches a fundamental tenet of the law, that it should only be a parliament that decides when a law applies or does not apply," he said.

The union’s national secretary, David Noonan, said he was opposed to any industry-specific coercive powers and he didn’t know how the “switch off" provisions came about.

Opposition workplace relations spokesman
Eric Abetz
, who is part of the inquiry panel, pressed officials on where the idea had come from. His questioning elicited the admission that it had not been raised in any of the consultations undertaken by the government.

“It was raised in the minister’s office at the time," Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations official Jeff Willing said. The minister was then Deputy Prime Minister
Julia Gillard
. The bill was drafted in 2009.

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“If the switch-off provisions are not supported by either employers or employees and didn’t come up in official consultations, one wonders why the government would seek to pursue it," Senator Abetz said. “It should have been deleted and could have made for a shorter bill."

He said department officials also admitted at the hearing the scope for the claiming of strike pay had been widened. Mr Noonan said preserving the Australian Building and Construction Commission would be to hold onto the “last vestige of the discredited WorkChoices".